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The Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad: controversy versus stats

The 2014 Super Bowl achieved a record breaking 111.5m viewers, making it the most watched event in USA history, just scraping past the 111.3m who watched the Super Bowl two years ago.

Of course the Super Bowl isn’t just about the football, it’s about the adverts. In fact much of what we read relating to the big game in the UK is mostly about the marketing: ‘it costs $4m per advertising slot’, ‘Scarlett Johansson and Soda Stream banned’, ‘David Beckham and H&M gamble with t-commerce’ and one story involving Coca-Cola that you can’t have failed to notice…

Coca-Cola’s unveiling of the controversial ‘Big Game’ commercial that carries the hashtag #AmericaIsBeautiful, in which the traditional American song ‘America the Beautiful’ is sung in nine different languages: English, Spanish, Tagalog, Mandarin, Hindi, Hebrew, Keres, French and Arabic.

A predictable storm of protest followed from the Conservative quarters of the USA, with many right-wing pundits and politicians choosing to take the ad as a provocative blow to their ideals and all the things they perceive to be ‘American’.

Albeit one from the most famous, American corporation on the planet.

How has this controversy affected the brand? How does the advert itself stack up against the competition in terms of online sharing; a barometer of general opinion away from the political world?

Touchstorm has sent us over some data from its Super Bowl Video Scoreboard that tracks the #AmericaIsBeautiful controversy over YouTube, in terms of post-Super Bowl shares, comments and likes. But first, a little insight into the controversy…

The one minute-long ad begins as you would expect any typical Super Bowl ad to begin, cowboy on horseback riding along to the strains of a young female vocalist singing the famed ode to patriotism.

What follows is a somehow Conservative-enraging bastardisation of all that is ‘wrong with America’, and if you’re really quick, you may even spot a gay couple in there too.

Glenn Beck, the agitating Fox News commentator had this to say.

Why did you need that to divide us politically? Because that’s all this ad is. It’s in your face and, if you’re offended by it, you’re a racist. If you do like it, you’re for progress.

If you were to believe the media coverage post Super Bowl, it’s easy for us to think that the following tweets are the normal response from the average American.

However I have now seen these same tweets repeated in at least five different news stories. Perhaps we need to look at actual data to ascertain the public approval of Coca-Cola and its ad.

Using a weighted average of four metrics: total views, subscriber conversion growth, likeability and velocity, Touchstorm has worked out that the Coca-Cola is the top most effective ad of the Super Bowl.

As of today (11 February), Coca-Cola’s ad has been number one for seven consecutive days. Here’s a timeline showing the ad’s growth since the Super Bowl.

With other brands releasing sneak previews of their Super Bowl ads before the day itself, Coca Cola chose not to, perhaps for fear of an early backlash. #AmericaIsBeautiful achieved more views on the day of its initial upload than any other brand that didn’t tease its ads first.

Of course, it’s easy to posit that the ad has managed this due to pure intrigue on behalf of a global audience wishing to know what the fuss is all about.

However in Touchstorm’s likeability ranking, based on positive engagement with the brand post Super Bowl, the #AmericaIsBeautiful campaign generated over 50,000 likes in five days, or one like per every 200 views, placing it in the top three campaigns in terms of positive engagement with users.

Coca-Cola has also seen strong YouTube subscriber growth as a result of the campaign peaking at over 1,100%.

Perhaps the advert isn’t as controversial on the ground as expected. Perhaps the message has been received more universally and positively than the extremes of Conservative politics would have us believe.

As for the controversy surrounding the inclusion of a gay couple, I’ll leave with this quote from Stephen Colbert in regard to ‘America the Beautiful’.

If the woman who wrote this song, Katharine Lee Bates, saw this ad, she would be disgusted. And so would her life partner, Katharine Coman, with whom she lived for 25 years.

With native advertising the buzz phrase among marketers for 2014, London is poised to lead the way in innovation in what is one of the most creative digital ad formats to emerge in recent years.

In November AirBnB co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk claimed that London was ‘stuck in a Silicon Valley Roundabout’ and held back by its failure to produce a ‘billion dollar’ online business.

Many in London found the comments annoying. Phil Cooper, a digital veteran who launched the UK’s first video ad network and was until last year European MD of Brightroll, was one of them.

Cooper, who launched his latest digital venture six months ago, London based accommodation platform Kippsy.com, a competitor of AirBnB in the London market, believes that what London does best is innovation; taking an established model, technology or platform and turning it on its head.

As has been the case for the past while, the start of a new year brings a whole host of predictions, rich with content about the importance of mobile (thankfully, this year we avoided the dreaded ‘year of mobile’ proclamations).

For PPC campaigns this year, one of the key challenges will be ensuring that the opportunity for increased sales via mobile traffic is efficiently and profitably taken.

Occasionally you see an incredulous question posted to reddit, along these lines: “What job do you have that allows you to browse reddit?”

I happen to think that all kinds of professionals should keep a close eye on reddit, as it is an ever-changing repository of the best content and discussion on the internet. Yes, there are too many cat gifs, but scratch below the surface and it is a fantastic place to find inspiration, examples, insight and expertise.

I thought I’d provide an overview of some of the categories (aka ‘subreddits’) that are worth subscribing to. Each of these subreddits has plenty to offer, especially for those of you – like me – who work in the digital industry. Creative and marketing folk would do well to tune in.

There are numerous reports on the AI talent shortage. Some estimate that there are perhaps 300,000 AI experts worldwide but millions of open positions. Another report says the number of jobs requiring AI has increased by 450 % since 2013.

Transport app Citymapper is not the flashiest app out there. It’s not as well-known as Uber, or as widely-used as Google Maps. However, it’s certainly one that has served me well throughout 2018, and has cemented its long-term position on my home screen.